I recommend Backbone as a first JS framework. As mentioned above, it contains less "magic" (and far less code) than any other framework of its popularity. You c

I recommend Backbone as a first JS framework. As mentioned above, it contains less "magic" (and far less code) than any other framework of its popularity. You can read the source for Backbone in an hour and will likely learn something about good Javascript practices, and self-documenting code, in doing so. Moreover, Backbone is a great example of MVC, the understanding of which is useful and highly transferrable to other (even non-JS) frameworks.